May.
It’s weird to write it out and even weirder to say. I know this time would come but now that it’s here, I felt as if it has crept up. Slow, yet full of purpose. Everyone seems to be in full letter-writing mode, word mapping and doodling for the sake of memory and people. It wasn’t too long ago I realized I will have friends spanning the entire United States. With my teammate Ethan in Oregon and myself in NC, we live from one ocean to the other, literally. Life in the States is something I look forward to, especially with these hooligans I met on the Race. When June 3rd does come, and my emotions are at 12’000 feet in elevation, the life I’ve lived on the race and the one I have back home will collide.
I won’t have an oxygen tank with me, but I will have my family and lots of time to sit, pray, read, cry, and write. “Processing” is a journey of its own and I intend to walk through it slowly yet sure of who God is. What He has done for me while traveling the world. Those are the things I want to also leave with you. Everything I feel God has shown me on the race is, in some ways, for love.
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST
When the question does come and I have to answer how I have changed, my answer stems more from what I have seen rather than what I have felt. When fatherless children cling close to you and team chemistry fails once again, love is hard to muster as a feeling. But the Holy Spirit strengthens and comforts us as God’s love is given freely. God’s grace beckons a Holy Spirit filled love I cannot explain because I didn’t have it before until I began to understand Him. As I began to feel it and see it within my own heart, I could equally see ways to love others. All of which requires the death of flesh, daily. Love is painful and hurts.
I woke up two or three days ago and had to convince myself to write, pray, and sit in God’s love. That’s the pain of love washing over my flesh and it’s not something of joy or triumph in the moment. But it is a fight for what I know to be true about Him and His word. To rest in this truth, “i gain no worth from productivity.” I am justified by the blood of Jesus Christ and stand under the lamb’s perfect propitiation.
This talk would have been in a head space before, now it moves from my heart. It moves from places in my soul the love of Christ has done it’s work. Now, its parts of myself I give away as I love. The pruning has left the fruit to bloom and be picked. I know what I say and give in word to others has changed in me. God has put His love in me and it is evident because my body rejects its foreign nature. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; all while keeping no record of wrong.
What I have learned is this: Grace freed me from having to lie to myself about my own strength and spirituality. God passing over my former sins and making me anew through the blood of Christ as a gift of love.
“In my weakness you are strong.”
“Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Now, I can sit across the table from a stranger or old friend and not worry about whether I am capable or able. I can rely on Him. I can admit to my weakness and failings when they come, and look back to the cross and trust in him again. The hardest decision I have made is to be loved and commune with God because it will test, break, bend, mold, and hold everything for me. It will refine me in the doing and in the silence. It will ask me to apologize and rejoice. It has asked me to sit with Him, talk honestly, and be His Son.
I pray you may find this grace God has for your own life. My eyes have seen and I am set free.
I love you all.
-Will
